Honestly, Officer...part 3

Honestly, Officer seems to be a recurring theme around here...and here...and now here:

Last night around 9:40pm, I got a call from Mike, who was on his way to work.

"I ran out of gas," he said. "Can you come get me?"

A little irritated to have to leave the comfort of the couch, I slid my feet into some slippers, told Annie where I was headed and drove the 10 minutes to where Mike was stranded.

I picked him up and dropped him at work and made plans to put gas in the car in the morning after his shift was over so he could drive it home then.

Half an hour later, I was back on the couch, snuggled under some blankets, remote in hand to watch Grey's Anatomy. The phone rang and it was a friend from church. So I paused Grey's to talk to my friend.

During our conversation, call waiting chimed in. "Private Caller" read the caller ID (I love caller ID!). I don't mind if people I know call me at 10:30pm, but if you're not willing to make yourself known, I'm not going to answer. So I wrapped up the call with my friend and returned to Grey's Anatomy.

About 10 minutes later, I started getting a nagging feeling that I should check the voicemail. After dismissing the feeling a few times, I picked up the phone and punched in the access numbers to retrieve my messages.

First, of course, I had to wade through a dozen previously left, but never listened to messages. I finally got to the message from "unknown caller."

"Hello, this is the Deputy Foster from the Sheriff's Department..."

Boy, did that get me to sit up in a hurry.

"I'm calling to inquire as to why your car is parked on the shoulder of the road on 111th Street. Please return the call at..."

Hmmm? Is it illegal to leave a car parked on the side of the road? I don't know, but when a sheriff says to call back, I'm gonna call back. So I called the number the deputy had left and reached the dispatch operator. While she put me on hold to find out who had called me, I saw headlights pull into my driveway.

Yep. It was the deputy.

I met him at the door, the dispatch operator still on hold in my left ear.

The deputy was nice as could be, and probably just slightly too old to date Annie. He asked if I was Amy M...and wanted to know if I knew my car was sitting unattended on 111th Street.

I explained that yes, I did know. That my husband ran out of gas on the way to work, that I couldn't do anything about it right now because I had three sleeping children in the house, and that we would pick it up in the morning if that was ok.

The deputy said that was fine. They just were concerned because it was a nice car (obviously the fact that it was pitch black out hid the scrapes and dings on the outside and the crumbs and leftover juice boxes on the inside) and there was a half-eaten baloney sandwich left on the front seat. He and his partner wanted to be certain there was no foul play.

No. No foul play. But there will probably be a foul smell when we get back to the car to remove the baloney sandwich..